My name is Kevin Van Lancker, Founder at Sportswear of Tomorrow and I am writing this article from my personal perspective.
On 24.10.2024, I attended Performance Days in Munich. As usual, it’s been great fun to meet everyone again. The previous industry events have been somewhat smaller, probably as many of us did not know whether the event would happen or not, due to Covid19 limitations.
For someone that is in this industry for over 20+ and knowing most of the owners and or sales agents of the various suppliers we are working with for such a long period of time, this event feels like coming home.
What’s new?
- Sustainability / circularity
A big topic and increasing year over year, is the offer of sustainable packaging, bio-based fabrics made of sugar coming from NOOSA (https://noosafiber.com/) or SORONA (https://sorona.com/) - Cycling Pads
TMF Cycling Pads (https://www.tmfcyclingpad.com/) has developed a unique, quick drying, floating pad that offers maximum comfort. - New fabrics
MITI Fabrics Italy has launched a range of biobased fabrics. More info can be found on their website: https://mitispa.com/tech/bioback/ - Newcomer
RIFRA Nastra used to supply elastics in the fashion space and now entered the sports industry offering a very large range of elastics with or without silicone. (https://www.rifranastri.it/) - Digital Passports by PORTIA
By 2027, brands will be forced to have a digital passport for every garment. We do not know many details on how this will look like, but PORTIA will have you ready! (http://portia.cloud/) - Innovation with algae
Another interesting booth at the innovation area was the one from https://biocrafted.com/
But, you also missed a chance to talk to me on what is probably going to disrupt our industry more than anything else: Artificial Intelligence!
We have created a platform for sportswear brands to Source, Manage and Scale their brand. Whether you are working with collections or with teamwear. Designs are made with AI, your end customer is measured with AI so no sizing kits are needed, followed by our tool producing the printfiles automatically to size which can be sent to your usual production (or to ours). Benefits of this: Bringing down the production time of teamwear from weeks/months to just days, stopping overproduction and moving to a world where custom designed – on demand produced sportswear becomes the standard. Of course, all products that are put out from our facility are only produced with/of biobased or recycled PES fabrics.
Looking forward to see you all at the next event! Best of luck in building out your sportswear brand.
Thank you,
Kevin